


An Apple in Two

by moemachina



Category: Shakespeare - Twelfth Night
Genre: Crossdressing, Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 05:26:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Act 5, everybody forgets Antonio. Or nearly everyone. Cross-dressing, daring prison escapes, and the Wonder Twins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Apple in Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inmyriadbits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmyriadbits/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide 2007. This was supposed to be a Yuletide Treat drabble, AND THEN IT GOT LONG, and then I had an hour until the deadline, and OH GOD. In closing, the finest line from _The Wind in the Willows_ : " _I_ have several aunts who OUGHT to be washerwomen."

Antonio sat in the dark and listened to the sounds of revels outside his cell. Even his guards were joining the festivities. He could hear them toasting one another down the hall. They had started daring one another to don the washerwoman's soapy dress. Soon, Antonio knew, they would be too drunk to stand.

Once, Antonio would have rejoiced at such an opportunity. Once, he would have hatched a dozen dazzling plans for escape. Once, he would have been safe at sea by the time morning arrived; aye, he would have been snug in a berth and five miles from the coast by the time the Duke of Illyria discovered his absence.

Instead, Antonio sat in the dark and thought about dying.

He had no plans to kill himself, but he had no plans to save himself either. He did not think he had the spirit to lift a finger if the executioner himself came that very night to collect his head. Antonio did not even think the executioner was strictly necessarily. He could feel his heart growing swollen and tender inside him. That distended organ could more easily slaughter him than all the efforts of Duke Orsino and his gaolers.

He should never have come back to this accursed shore. He had made a mistake. He would undo it if he could.

No, no, maybe not that. He had been played false, but he could not regret rescuing a drowning man. He could not regret helping him on his quest for a lost sister. He could not regret following him.

His only regret that Sebastian had never thought to follow _him_. And so here Antonio sat, listening to the guards make drunken wagers and waiting for a man who never came.

There was a noise, and Antonio looked up to see a ghost at his cell door.

He yelped involuntarily.

"Shut up," the ghost hissed. "Shut up, and give me a hand. This lock is rusty."

"Sebastian?" Antonio breathed.

The man arched an eye. "Close. Ah, there we go." With a low squeal, the lock submitted and the door swung open. The figure, voluminous in a sail's worth of white robes, stepped daintily into the moonlit cell and closed the door. "Here. We don't have much time. Put these on."

Antonio caught the tossed bundle, which smelled powerfully of soap. "No," he said at last. "You're not him. You're his other."

"Yes," the other said. "I'm his sister." She executed an ironic bow. "Viola by birth, Master Antonio, but you may call me Cesario if you wish. Some still do."

"I saw you, that day," Antonio said. "I mistook you for him, until I saw you two side-by-side..." He leaned closer to peer at her. "It is still an eerie resemblance."

Viola smiled thinly. "You are not the only one to feel so, Master Antonio. But we must hurry. The hour of your escape draws nigh."

"It does?"

Viola sighed audibly. "Yes, yes. Tell me, are you challenged in your wits? You must put on that dress, and you must do it now. I have only rented it from the washerwoman for two hours." 

Antonio unfolded the pungent bundle of cloth and found the dress, yoke, and cowl worn by the washerwoman on her weekly rounds through the prison. She was supposed to arrive at a set and regular time, but she was apt to take up her duties at odd hours of the night.

Antonio smiled. "A good plan, my lady. I begin to see its outlines. And the outer guards? Bribed, I suppose?"

"Somewhat," the woman said. "I daresay that they don't suspect you, though. You must not be recognized. I didn't pay them that much. Do change, good sir."

"What, now? With you here?"

Viola rolled her eyes. "I do not aim to join the guards at their drinking contest while you kit yourself out, sir. I assure you, my sensibilities are by no means delicate. I lived as a man among men for months. Change, Antonio."

And change Antonio did, although he still had modesty enough to turn to the wall as he shucked his threadbare trousers and louse-ridden tunic. The washerwoman's clothing felt soft and thick and curiously comforting, as if each layer was a warm blanket on a cold night. 

He put his hands on his hips and looked down at himself. The washerwoman was large woman, and if Antonio did not have the flesh to fill the dress, the cloth's empty spaces billowed out convincingly. 

"I do not know if I can move in all these skirts."

"You can. Just don't let them drag on the floor or catch on anything." Viola pursed her mouth. "Skirts," she said, mostly to herself, "are a damnable nuisance."

The escape itself was almost laughably easy. Viola marched down the hall and past the guard room, and the sotted guards were too far gone to notice either her or the drab washerwoman at her heel. As she passed the door, she casually replaced on its nail the ring of keys she had used on Antonio's locked cell door. The guards, deep in a giggling discussion of cross-gartered stockings, reacted to neither the betraying clank nor Viola's white form floating past the door.

"Why?" Antonio whispered as they came out into the moonlight and the prison courtyard. "I have seen drunk and unobservant guards in my time, but never _that_ drunk and unobservant."

"They are drinking a special vintage, personally supplied by the young bride of Count Orsino," Viola said, her face hidden by the dark. "A most special vintage procured from a most cunning man in Countess Olivia's kitchen. Now, shush. The outer guards are sober." 

Antonio obediently lowered his head and ambled humbly in Viola's wake as they approached the gatehouse.

"My lady," the guard called. "I see you found the washerwoman well enough."

"Aye," Viola said. "I found the drab asleep among the cellar rats, just as I was told." Her voice, Antonio noticed, had lost the low, cultured tones she had used when talking to him in his cell. Now she sounded high-pitched and peevish, a merchant's wife complaining to the neighbors about the poor quality of her help. 

The guard barely concealed his smirk. "Yes, my lady. Do you need an escort back?"

"No, no," Viola said easily. "I have a coach waiting just over the hill. Can't you hear the horses? Come, drudge."

She sailed out the gates, and the poor washerwoman plodded behind her. The guard ostentatiously did not watch them go.

As soon as they were beyond view of the gate, Antonio pulled back his cowl.

"They can't think that the new Duchess of Illyria would come by herself in the middle of the night for a peripatetic washerwoman," he said conversationally.

"Oh, I suspect they don't think that," Viola said easily. "But I paid them enough to make them not think much at all. If they suspect anything, they suspect only that my husband has unspeakable lusts that can only be slaked by chip-toothed washerwomen."

Antonio said nothing for a while, and then he said, "Then you are new-married, my lady? I offer my felicitations." 

"I accept them," Viola said. "I now must add 'Duchess of Illyria' to my many names. I am starting to have quite a collection, you know."

"Yes," Antonio agreed absently. "My lady, I am most grateful for your assistance tonight, and I have no desire to examine the teeth of your gift. But... _why_?"

The were standing on a dusty road. The prison squatted darkly behind them. Before them, the distant lights of the harbor blazed. Aside from the wind and the distant roar of the sea, all was silent. The dark smelled like violets.

"Because you were being forgotten," Viola said at last. She turned to look at him squarely. "I could see it happening. First, all the people who saw you taken away in chains, all those people could not remember your face, your name, or your fate. They did not even remember that you had been there, with us, that day. But, of course, they were humble people; they cannot be expected to remember each little thread in the day."

She brushed back the short tendrils of her hair. "Then, more slowly, the Duke grew ever more vague about your crime and the precise nature of your sin. But, true, he was a man on the cusp of his wedding day; he had other things to occupy his mind than old transgressions and every single prisoner mildewing within his cells. But, last of all, I saw my brother forgetting you. Each day, he meant to speak on your behalf, to win your freedom from Orsino, but each day, something arose and prevented his immediate action, and each day, his resolution dwindled. I saw him forgetting you, and everything you had done for him, and everything he owed you. I saw him forgetting his obligation." She paused. "I saw him forgetting you."

It was bad enough to listen to these words. It was worse to hear them from someone with Sebastian's face, Sebastian's voice, and Sebastian's stance.

"Oh," Antonio said as his heart dilated with pain. "Ah."

"I know how it can be, you see," Viola whispered. "I have been forgotten myself, at times." She crossed her arms across her chest, and Antonio belatedly recognized her ghostly robes as a wedding dress. "And I knew that I could not let you be forgotten and left to waste away in prison. I _knew_. So I drugged guards and bribed others and brought you out of that prison, and there is a captain in the harbor tonight who will take you far away, Antonio. And you may go where you want, and be whomever you wish to be."

"My lady," Antonio said, "the Duke will know that you aided me."

"No," Viola said. "For what man would confess that his bride left him sleeping in their bed to steal away and release a low, nameless prisoner?"

"He will know when he wakes up," Antonio said.

"No," Viola said, and her voice took on a strange, deep note. She hugged herself. "He will not wake up. I had the task of waiting upon him, sometimes, at night. I have seen him sleep this sleep before. He will not wake until the sun is far advanced in the heavens." In the moonlight, she suddenly smiled, and Antonio recognized that private, satisfied expression from the morning expressions of queens and country women alike. "And even when he wakes, he will have other things to think about, I assure you. He barely remembers your name now; in a day or two, you will be completely forgotten. Do not worry about Orsino, Antonio. You two are now nothing to one another."

"And your brother?" Antonio asked. "Am I a ghost to your brother as well?"

Viola turned away. "I cannot speak for my brother. My days of ventriloquism are at an end. But I think his is no easy row to hoe."

"I heard that he married the countess," Antonio managed to say with a dry tongue. 

"Aye," Viola said. "Although she believed herself to be marrying me at the time. I confess, I wonder if she closes her eyes even now and pretends that it _is_ me--but, no, that is unworthy of me. Never mind. Suffice it to say that my brother Sebastian was ever impulsive, and I am not surprised that he elected to marry a maiden after an hour's acquaintance with her. Neither would I be surprised if his rash vow are now hanging heavy on him."

The weight under Antonio's breast lightened somewhat. It was a cold comfort to think that Sebastian might be marinating in the same misery that sloshed along Antonio's veins, but it _was_ a comfort.

"Come now, Antonio," Viola said. "A new morning awaits." 

They walked together over the dirt road and past the sleeping fields of grain and grapes. 

"What will you do, good Antonio?" Viola asked quietly. "What will you do now?"

"The same as I did before I met your brother, my lady," Antonio said. "Sail the seas and ply the sails for the man who pays me best. It is not a boring life, I freely admit. I have seen strange and wondrous sights in my travels. Aye, and sights that would chill the blood of any man."

"Ah," she said, and Antonio heard the envy in her voice. "Yes, that sounds like a proper life."

"And you, Viola? What will you do?"

There was a long silence. "I will be a Duchess, I suppose," Viola said. "I will preside over banquets and baptisms, and I will do my level best to soften the harsh edges of the Duke's rule. I will help see the workings of the country run with grace, I suppose."

"Ah," Antonio said, and there was no envy in his voice.

"I had my choice," Viola said, "and I chose. I could have chosen, as you did, the adventure, the journey, the quest. I could have chosen danger and excitement. I could have chosen Cesario, had I wanted. And it would have been good life, and it would have made a good choice. But instead I chose Orsino and Viola, and I chose well. I have enjoyed the life of the sword, Antonio, but now I will enjoy the life of the hearth." She smiled suddenly. "Until, of course, I decide to take up the sword once again." 

"You must forgive me, but I do not remember the Count as any person worthy of such dedication," Antonio said.

"No? Well, perhaps not. I, too, remember a man cold and prideful. But I could see that he was a good man drowning in his disguises, and I knew I could rescue him. Wait. Is that a light?"

And indeed, there was a light, small and yellow, floating over the hill. 

"A lantern," Antonio said dully.

"We could hide in the wheat field," Viola said.

"We could dive in a ditch," Antonio said.

"We could pretend we got lost on the only road to the prison," said the Duchess of Illyria. 

"We could offer to scrub their linens," said the man in the washerwoman's dress.

Instead, they simply stood there and waited for the light to reach them. It had been a full night. Their genius for escape was temporarily exhausted.

The lantern trembled and halted a few feet away. Viola wearily sighed.

"Hail, stranger, and well-met," she said at the same moment the stranger said, "Viola?"

"Sebastian?" Viola and Antonio said simultaneously.

There was an exceedingly awkward silence before all three parties began to speak at the same time in cracking voices.

"Stop, stop, _stop_ ," Viola said fiercely. "Sebastian. What are you doing here?"

"I came to rescue Antonio," Sebastian said irritably, and Antonio's heart popped like a balloon.

"Oh," Viola said. "Well, maybe I should have conferred with you. It might have been more efficient."

"Well, I didn't think _you_ were going to rescue him," Sebastian said. "You barely know him."

"The heart knows its own," Viola said. "So what now, brother? Your benefactor is free. What now?"

Sebastian scuffed his feet against the ground. "I was going to see if he and I could get out-bound berths tomorrow," he said, and Antonio's light heart sang.

"And what about Olivia?" Viola asked sternly.

"Oh, Viola," Sebastian cried. "She looks at me as if I were some stranger in her husband's clothes. Whatever brave face she wore falters now. She was marrying you; we both know it." 

Viola said nothing. 

"And, too, I had nightmares," Sebastian said. "I had nightmares that I was drowning, and there was no one there that could rescue me." And for the first time that night, he looked directly at Antonio.

"Ah," Viola said.

"I will make things right with her," Sebastian said. "I will leave her everything she owns, and give her everything I own. As ever, she will want for nothing. And she will be happier with me as an idea only. You know it is true."

"You should not have married her," Viola said at last.

"No," Sebastian said. "But should I be saying the same to you? Are you abroad on your wedding night? Has something...happened?"

"Nonsense," Viola said crisply. "Neither Orsino nor I married an _idea_ , I assure you." She stretched her arms above her head. "But, my dearest brother, I believe I will present you with the rest of this rescue attempt. Can you handle it? Did you bring a horse?"

"I left him at the bottom of the hill," Sebastian said suspiciously. 

"Excellent," Viola said. "I will be stealing him. My best to you, good Antonio, and my best to you, Sebastian, if I do not manage to see you tomorrow. There is a warm bed on the other side of the river, gentlemen, and it is calling me."

They watched her saunter down the road until the dim white flame of her dress was lost to the dark. 

Sebastian turned back to Antonio, who was watching him hungrily, and said, as the profound first words he had spoken to the other since their long and difficult parting, 

"Antonio, are you wearing a _dress_?"

 


End file.
